


Thanksgiving with the Winchesters

by doilycoffin



Series: Wincest Love Week (Fall 2016) [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Family, Fluff, Implied/Referenced Sex, M/M, Thanksgiving
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-28
Updated: 2016-11-28
Packaged: 2018-09-02 22:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8685931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doilycoffin/pseuds/doilycoffin
Summary: It's their first proper, full-on Thanksgiving as a family in, well, ever and Sam and Dean both want it to go perfectly. Surprisingly, it does.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "Thanksgiving dinner with Mary"

For a long time when Sam was a kid, he never really gave Thanksgiving much thought and the only thing he really valued about it was that it meant getting a couple of days off from school during the week, which meant he had more time to watch cartoons and play with Dean. It wasn’t until Stephanie Carroway invited him to her family’s Thanksgiving dinner that he began to feel like he was missing out. There was just something about sitting at a table with a home cooked meal and being surrounded by a happy family that filled him with a sense of envy and although that Thanksgiving dinner was a memory that he cherished for many years afterward, he always looked upon it with a slight sense of bitterness because he knew that it wasn’t something that he could replicate with his own family. It wasn’t that John didn’t _try_ ; in fact, he generally made an effort to be with him and Dean on holidays unless a hunt had gone so sideways that it was just impossible to do so (which unfortunately was the case on more than one occasion). But even from a young age, Sam could tell that his dad became particularly weighed down by sadness during the holiday season as it only compounded the sense of grief that was his constant companion after Mary’s death, so a couple of buckets of fried chicken were just about all of the holiday cheer that he could muster.

Eventually though, with all the crap he and Dean dealt with on a constant basis, Sam stopped paying attention to the idea of Thanksgiving altogether. Sure, he and Dean would sometimes snag a couple of turkey sandwiches in a half-assed observation of the holiday, but they never really made much of a fuss about it. It wasn’t until Mary sent him and Dean a text a few days before Thanksgiving asking them if they had any plans for the holiday that Sam even remembered that it was coming up, but that old sense of yearning ignited in his chest all the same. If their mom coming back from the dead wasn’t a good enough excuse to throw together a proper Thanksgiving, then what was?

Fortunately, Dean didn’t exactly need any convincing, and he invited Mary over for Thanksgiving dinner before Sam even had the chance to mention it to him. Far from wary of the fact that he’d never cooked a full-on Thanksgiving dinner before, Dean seemed to view it as an enticing challenge of sorts and had been experimenting with different recipes in the days leading up to the holiday, almost militant in his desire to get everything just right. Part of Sam was amused by how seriously Dean was taking the whole thing, but another part of him half-thought that Dean’s obsession with putting together an impeccable Thanksgiving stemmed from some subconscious belief that Mary would stick around for good if he showed her what a perfect little family they could be.

When the big day finally arrived, they were both surprised by the fact that Mary showed up several hours earlier than they anticipated. Originally, the plan was for everything to be cooked and arranged on the table before her arrival, but the turkey had barely been put in the oven when she knocked on the door.

“I know you told me that I didn’t need to be here until this evening, but I felt a little guilty about letting you boys do all the work,” she explained to a flustered Dean. “I’m not exactly a whiz in the kitchen, but I’m pretty handy with a knife. If you need any vegetables chopped, then I’m your gal.”

Likely knowing that it would be a lost cause to insist that Mary relax rather than trouble herself with the preparations (the Winchesters were a stubborn bunch to be sure), Dean quickly shifted gears and shooed Mary away from the kitchen and towards the dining room where Sam was busy preparing a variety of desserts.

“I’ve got everything in the kitchen under control, but I think Sam could use a hand if you want to help him out. Just make sure he doesn’t try to do any of that sugar-free bullshit with any of the desserts; I’ll never forgive him if there ends up being a sugarless pie on my table,” he said, giving Sam a warning look before dashing back in the kitchen.

“Wow, he seemed pretty eager to get me out of his way,” Mary said to Sam. “I’m not that much of a disaster in the kitchen.”

“I wouldn’t take it too personally. Dean’s kind of a control freak when it comes to cooking and doesn’t really like it when people get in his space,” Sam said while passed Mary a bowl of cookie dough to stir.

Mary’s lips twitched into a grin. “He’s that bad, huh?”

“Yeah, he can get pretty extreme. Cas isn’t even allowed in the kitchen anymore due to an incident about a year ago. Poor guy got a lifetime ban.”

“I can hear you talking smack about me, Sammy,” Dean called from the kitchen. “The ban was justified and you know it.”

“A couple of weeks ago, you literally sprayed him with a squirt bottle because he got in the general vicinity of the oven. It’s a little excessive is all I’m saying,” Sam pointed out as he began spooning fruit into the pie shells laid out in front of him.

“ _He knows what he did_.”

Sam rolled his eyes and let the subject drop while Mary looked at him fondly, amused by their silly bickering. For a while, they worked in a comfortable silence and Sam lost himself in the baking process as he tried to make sure that the myriad of pies, cakes, and cookies were coming along nicely. He knew that he was probably making a ridiculous amount of desserts for only three people, but he figured that he could be forgiven for going all-out since it was their first real Thanksgiving.

Besides, Sam had found himself with an affinity for baking over the past year or so. He’d never had much talent for the kind of cooking that Dean did, but he ended up being surprisingly good at baking. In a way, he supposed that it made sense. While Dean enjoyed the fast and loose nature of cooking and used recipes as vague guidelines that he was free to interpret and improvise on, Sam liked that baking was often a little more rigid and precise. In a weird way, it made him feel like he had a sense of control that he so often lacked in other aspects of his life.

Mary cleared her throat. “Now that I think about it, this is the first Thanksgiving that we’ve spent together,” she said, interrupting Sam’s train of thought. “Even if he was too young to remember it well now, I at least had a few of them with Dean. But with you…”

Her voice trailed off as she got a far away look in her eye, but he knew she was referring to the fact that she died only a few short weeks before they would have had their first Thanksgiving together.

“Well, hopefully this is just the first of many.” Sam smiled as he put a reassuring hand on Mary’s shoulder.

Her face softened and she leaned into the touch. “I wouldn’t miss them for the world.”

*******************

A few hours later, everything was finally out of the oven, and both the dining room table and the kitchen counter bore the feast that they prepared.

“Okay, so we might have gone overboard,” Dean admitted as looked upon the sea of dishes.

“I’m not so sure about that.” Mary grinned as she began filling up her plate with a mountain of food. “I’m so hungry that I could eat a horse, and everything you made looks delicious.”

Dean tried to play it off, but Sam could see the look of sheer delight that came across his face at Mary’s praise. He knew from years of experience that Dean was the type of person who liked to express his affection through cooking; he’d never admit to something so sappy, but Sam knew that Dean poured a little bit of love into everything he cooked and nothing made him happier than to know that his efforts were sincerely appreciated.

As Mary continued sampling from each other the dishes laid out, her hand hovered over one of the pots as she stared at it with a look of recognition.

“Is this…?”

“John Winchester’s Famous Kitchen Sink Stew?,” Dean filled in. “Yup. Just like Dad used to make it. I figured that we needed to represent him here somehow and God knows he loved the stuff.”

Mary didn’t speak for a minute and her eyes began to look a little glassy. “He really did.” She gave a watery laugh. “He was always tinkering with the recipe and scribbling down changes to it. He used to drive me so crazy because he would always make it in gigantic batches and we’d end up eating it for a solid week. And then whenever I got a cold, he would put extra pepper in it because–”

“’–it’s so spicy that it’ll clear your sinuses right up,’” both Sam and Dean finished in unison and shared a smile with Mary.

“Exactly.”

The rest of the dinner passed with all of them in good spirits, laughing and sharing stories as they ate until they could barely move and then waited until they got their second wind so they do it all over again with dessert. In moments like these, it felt to Sam that Mary was such a natural piece of their lives that it was almost as if they had never been without her at all.

*****************

Later that evening when Sam was sure that Mary was fast asleep in one of the bedrooms at the end of the hall, he crept quietly over to Dean’s room and carefully opened the door without making any noise.

“You know, you really outdid yourself today,” he said by way of greeting. “You’re not half-bad at this whole Thanksgiving thing.”

“Hey, I can’t take all the credit, your desserts are always pretty bitchin’. I’ll probably weigh 300 pounds if you keep this up.” Dean dramatically patted his belly.

“You’re the one who refuses to let me make them healthy in any way. You only have yourself to blame if you get too fat to run away from whatever monsters end up chasing us in the future.”

“That’s a risk I’m willing to take, Sammy.”

Sam sighed in fond exasperation and slid into his bed, resting his head on his brother’s chest as Dean gave a hum of contentment and slid his hands under Sam’s shirt.

Sam cringed away from the touch with an undignified yelp. “Jesus, your hands are freezing,” he griped.

“Yeah, but you’re a freakin’ furnace, so it’s only fair that you warm them up for me,” Dean argued as continued to run his icicle hands over Sam’s chest.

“I can think of some other activities that we could do to warm you up.” Sam gave Dean a heated look.

Dean groaned.“I’m truly flattered that you think I’m in any way capable of fucking you right now, but I would really appreciate it if you would just let me go into my food coma in peace.”

“I mean, I was gonna suggest that we make use of some of the leftover whipped cream that I have in the fridge, but I guess we can just go straight to sleep if you really want to.” Sam smirked as Dean immediately perked up.

“Whoa Sam, let’s not be hasty here. I think I just might be able to muster up enough energy to go on.” Dean leapt from the bed to make a dash for the kitchen.

“Oh, and Dean?,” Sam called as Dean’s hand was clasped around the doorknob. “Feel free to bring some of that leftover pie with you too. I’m sure we can think of something to do with it.”

“Oh man, this holiday is fucking awesome!”

Sam couldn’t disagree.


End file.
